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Brine shrimp condensor/rinser first run

This is my first test of the condensor/rinser on approximately 2.5MM nauplii that have been enriched for a day.

After a lot of work and planning, I finally was able to get my hands on the replacement nets for the fish hatcheries and test my brine shrimp condensor/rinser idea. The short summary is it worked, and I was able to save valuable time by having the device rinse my Artemia nauplii while I did other work in the lab. There were some kinks I would like to improve however, because these nets were hand sewn they are all slightly different fit over the frames, which leads to tiny gaps along the edges where the nauplii get caught in. When harvesting, there is some difficulty getting these lines of nauplii out. I could just abandon them as acceptable losses, but I feel like this is a problem that can be solved.

The other kink that may be problematic is the filtering on the condensor/rinser. The water movement is provided by two Penguin 100B biowheel pumps from Marineland that I have laying around. The filter cartridges uses have a mechanical gauze filter over some active carbon. I am not sure this is sufficient to clear the water of all the metabolytes, Nannochloropsis algae particles, SELCO particles, and various waste that is introduced into the tank. The water is slightly cloudy and shows no signs of improvement after several hours in the lab. If these pumps won’t work, I’ll have to think of a different solution.

Something like that would work; I was thinking of just buying a larger nauplii net from a local fish store and trying that out. This particular item off Amazon though may be problematic. It doesn’t list how much of the surface area is open space, which is critical for sufficient water flow through the sock. It also mentions that the opening size is not uniform and may have a range of opening sizes. The last thing is it’s disposable and not intended to be washable. Brine Shrimp Direct sells woven mesh bags that satisfy those requirements, I actually had one disassembled to make the prototype net. But the biggest issue is still cleaning out the rinser water, otherwise the process is not labor saving if I have to keep changing and cleaning the tank.